Skinny
dipping with the devilExpanded from
the 7-20-2008 Daily Sparks Tribune
Updated 8-7-2008

Because of chronic gerrymandering
and logrolling, the winner of a Nevada party primary is often guaranteed victory
in November. Such a sad scenario applies in the case of Sen. Bill Raggio,
R-Reno. The lone Democrat in the race is running on a platform of anti-immigration
racism, so Big Bad Bill's real fight comes in next month's primary against
yahoo former assemblyperson Sharron Angle.

She has the intellectual depth
of a bantamweight flea, but is very presentable on television and knows how
to engineer an effective door-to-door campaign.

The Republicans have a tough choice in that race between a taxophobe who will
lead the state back to the stone age and a guy who has consistently sold out
his constituents.

The old warhorse has proven masterful at snowing local media with the idea
that he is the protector of the north against those dastards from Gomorrah
South. Nothing could be further from the truth.

On last week's Nevada
Newsmakers, Angle told Reno Kazoo-Journal reporter Ray Hagar and
program host Sam Shad that Raggio had given three northern assembly
seats to the south. Later in the week, Raggio blamed assembly Democrats.

Ms. Angle was quite correct about the assembly seats, but should have added
one senate position. Raggio allowed the venerable Jake Jacobsen, R-Washoe-Carson-Douglas,
to be redistricted out of office, as well as his own law partner and fellow
railroad trenchie, Greg Brower, whom Angle then went out and beat in
a consolidated district.

In 2001, Raggio had a deal cut to expand the ledge to its full constitutionally
allowed size of 75, preserving northern seats. He reneged when the White House
ordered him to remove some Democrats from the new southern Nevada congressional
district. (Thank you, former Sparks schoolboy Karl Rove.)

Raggio's blaming of assembly Democrats was a terminological inexactitude.
(In the British parliament, a member may not call another a liar, so Winston
Churchill began accusing prevaricators of terminological inexactitudes.
There's a lot of that still going around in these parts.)

Raggio was also responsible for the permanent loss of tax revenue to the south
starting in 1991.

Assessor Bob McGowan was rightly criticized for mis-reportage of local
property values. He and his staff did not remove the value of construction
work in progress from the bottom line of finished construction, thus overstating
the appraised value of new projects and resulting in a loss to Washoe County.

McGowan blamed it on a poorly worded
state form and said other county assessors had made the same error. But it
came at the worst time, making incoming majority leader Jack Vergiels,
D-Las Vegas, and the boys from down south mad as hell at Raggio.

They extract their revenge on your
wallet to this very day.

In 2002, Raggio and his minions
used his greatest sellouts of his constituents to defeat Democrats, blaming
them for what he did and getting away with it.

Only this column printed the truth.
The Donkeykongs lost the game by rolling over and playing dead as usual. (See
below.)

The choice for current Washoe voters is thus between the devil and the deep
blue sea. I suggest skinny dipping with Sharron Angle who will, as Raggio
noted to Shad and Hagar, be reduced to crocheting hopeless legislation from
the back of the senate bus. (My analogy.)

That's better than we're used to.

Both candidates have agreed to debate face-to-face on a future Shad show,
which will give them 22 minutes. I'll give them two hours on my
show, and the offer is hereby tendered.

I think they needed to dig back further. Two of Carter's ancestors served
on the Washoe County Commission in the 1870's. I'm sure there's some dirt
to be had there.

That would be about as good as the bullshit negative campaign Maurice and
his hitmen have been running against the railroad engineer. They took some
still frames from a TV debate and distorted them. Then they accused Carter
(who has never held office) of siding with them dirty liberals from Gomorrah
South to send Washoe tax money to Las Vegas. They even use a quote from
former Assemblyman Ken Haller, D-Reno.

From 1991.

The truth is otherwise.

LV did hit Washoe's treasury hard in 1991 after Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno,
raised the specter of a southern Nevada fiscal raid in a misguided attempt
to save Sen. Erik Beyer, R-Reno. A Beyer victory in 1990 would have
preserved Raggio's position as majority leader. Beyer nonetheless lost to
Democrat Diana Glomb.

Raggio's demagoguery of the north-south fair share issue inflamed Las Vegas
Democrats and Republicans alike. Las Vegas has long been the tail that wags
the dog, producing revenue which the state distributes to Nevada's northern
counties. At the same time Raggio was pouring on kerosene, the Washoe county
assessor discovered a tax sharing error in Las Vegas' favor. The southerners
would have overlooked it had Raggio not enraged them, so Washoe County had
to pay the money back to the state treasury over many years. That's why
Reno streets went unrepaired for so long, among other things.

Now, in a desperate attempt to save Washington, Raggio is using one of the
greatest screwups of his own career to smear Carter.

Barbwire
10-13-2002: GERRYMANDERING FOR GOD AND THE GOP. At a
(videotaped) debate sponsored by the Vestal Virgins League of Vague Politics,
Democrats, Republicans and fringies alike decried the loss of legislative
clout for the north, which saw three assembly seats and one senate seat
removed to sprawling southern Nevada. None dared state the reason why. Caving
to pressure from the White House, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno,
sold the seats to Las Vegas in exchange for the removal of 8,000 Democrats
from the new southern Nevada Congressional District 3. Watch that show tonight
and see if anybody dares cross the vindictive Raggio.

Barlett,
Donald L. and Steele, James B.;America: What Went Wrong?
(1992); America: Who Really Pays the Taxes? (1994); America:
Who Stole the Dream? (1996) ; Andrews & McMeel/Universal
Press Syndicate. For additional comments on the work of the two-time
Pulitzer Prize-winning team, use the NevadaLabor.com
search engine and sweep for "Barlett."

By
one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3
billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion
to suit big business goals.Lapham's
number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted
that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had
already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation,
for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)

Adjusted
for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in
2005 dollars.

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